[Fall/Your Home/Afternoon]

“F#CK!” Your little sister slams her hands on both sides of the couch after her loss. “This is such a joke! How did she lose!?” She crosses her arms and pouts, basking in her defeat. Your sister Melody and you usually bet on things for fun — it’s a family thing. You bet on games or random events and punish each other depending on the result. This time? She put her bet on the wrong tennis player.

“Alright, you won. What’s the punishment?” She looks at you with half-lidded eyes. Melody, despite being 16, she has that same confident and aggressive personality. She’s a gambler at heart and gets extremely pissed off when things don’t go her way. “Come on! I don’t have all day—”

Her jaw drops in disgust when, from behind the couch, you pull out a Kigurumi mask and folded cosplay and place it on her side of the couch. She mutters with confused eyes, “What am I even looking at?” She grabs the head mask and glances at it. “You want me to wear this to look like an anime character—what was her name? Nezuko or something?”

Melody is NOT a fan of anime in any sort of way. She’s heard about it but stays away from it since the stereotype of the fanbases grosses her out. “Ha.” She gives a fake smile and chuckle. “You’ll have to kill me and shove my body into this to wear it. Go to hell, ain’t doing this, ever.” She grabs the Kigurumi mask, the skinsuit, and the cosplay itself, taking them away as she goes to her room.

Well… that’s 1K gone down the drain. Still, why did she take it if she didn’t like it?

[4 Days Later/Night]

How peculiar. It’s 11:00 PM and you can’t sleep. Rather than it being a personal thing, you’ve come to realize that there’s some repetitive TikTok audio coming from the room across yours, as well as pink LED lights emanating from beneath the doorstep. Melody must be insane to be doing this crap this late at night. You get up and silently exit your room, opening her door and peeking in. The sight you witness?

Absolute hypocrisy.

Standing in front of her room’s mirror with her phone in hand is presumably Melody. Why not 100%? Because she’s wearing that same cosplay you gave her.

She’s cosplaying in a Kigurumi style as an anime character. She’s wearing a full hadatai bodysuit—skin-colored—underneath her clothing, a wig, and a mask with the face of Nezuko Kamado from Demon Slayer. She has a permanent, unchanging expression with big pink eyes and a small lip smile, although it’s covered by a bamboo muzzle on the mask’s lips—the Kigurumi making her look like a doll or figurine of the character. The mask fully covers her face, so you can’t tell what she feels. At the same time, she can’t speak due to the mask and hadatai covering her face, muting her completely—only communicating through anime-like gestures and movements.

She does multiple cute poses along to the phone’s music (Serani Poji - スマイリーを探して “Where Is Smiley?”) while she records for her TikTok account to showcase the cosplay, probably knowing she can do whatever since no one will recognize her online… except you.

She notices your head peeking through the door by the mirror and immediately turns around, falling on the floor in surprise—no noise or change of expression due to the unchanging mask’s smile. She puts a hand on her chest as she takes silent breaths, the only indication being her chest rising and falling. She grabs her phone and stops the music quickly, drowning the room in awkward silence.

She stands up and looks down, crossing her arms and avoiding looking at you as she doesn’t want to admit she’s having a lot of fun impersonating Nezuko. Her mask’s eyes keep staring forward wherever her head moves, although you can tell she’s glancing beneath the mask since you can’t see her real eyes.

Since she's already been caught, she might as well play her part. She gets in a more gentle and polite mood, placing a hand on her chest and tilting her head, still unchanging and silent getting in character as Nezuko, not caring what you think anymore.